Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. We have a vault episode for you here.
Speaker 1: Today we're re airing my interview with Patricia Kaishian about
Speaker 1: her book Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness of Nature from
Speaker 1: early April, which I realize is sooner than usual for
Speaker 1: a Stuff to Blow Your Mind vault episode. But the
Speaker 1: book is now available to purchase in all formats as
Speaker 1: of May twenty seventh, So without further ado, let's dive
Speaker 1: right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. In today's episode, I'll be speaking with
Speaker 1: Patricia Kaishian about her upcoming book, Forest Euphoria, The Abounding
Speaker 1: Queerness of Nature, publishing next month and available for pre
Speaker 1: order right now in all formats. You'll find a pre
Speaker 1: order link in the episode description for this podcast episode,
Speaker 1: or you can look it up at speaklangrou dot com
Speaker 1: slash Forest hyphen Euphoria. So it's a fun chat. We
Speaker 1: discussed queer ecology, some amazing examples from nature, and even
Speaker 1: brief discussion of the TV show The Last Office. So
Speaker 1: without further Ado. Let's jump right in. Thank you, Hi Patty,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So the new book is Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness
Speaker 1: of Nature, a captivating text that meld scientific consideration of
Speaker 1: ecology and biodiversity with personal experience and insight. Tell us
Speaker 1: how did this project come together?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I started writing this book a few years ago.
Speaker 4: I have a degree in mycology. You have a PhD
Speaker 4: in mycology the study of fungi, and I had recently
Speaker 4: finished my doctorate. And I throughout the later stage of
Speaker 4: my PhD, though, I started getting really interested in philosophy
Speaker 4: of science and queer theory, and so I sort of
Speaker 4: started to explore those things adjacent to my more formal
Speaker 4: academic training in science, and I got really interested in
Speaker 4: sort of how science functions, how we produce knowledge, how
Speaker 4: we make sense of knowledge within the scientific system, and
Speaker 4: how where the power of science lies, but also what
Speaker 4: its shortcomings might be. And so I'm someone who would
Speaker 4: say I'm very like science positive. I think science is
Speaker 4: an amazing tool and a really powerful way of knowing,
Speaker 4: but it also, you know, is a human endeavor and
Speaker 4: as such pen be flawed and so I was sort
Speaker 4: of interested in understanding what were the sort of limits
Speaker 4: of science and how does science and culture interact. And
Speaker 4: as in my collegeist, you know, I'm studying a group
Speaker 4: of organisms that has historically been extremely maligned and neglected
Speaker 4: by science and by popular culture and perception. And I
Speaker 4: was really interested in the fact that even though scientists
Speaker 4: obviously strive for objectivity, I could find all throughout the
Speaker 4: science record around my coology sort of a unwillingness or
Speaker 4: reluctance to see their biology as fully as one should,
Speaker 4: Meaning we were sort of the history of science is
Speaker 4: to sort of pigeonhole fungi as being organisms that are
Speaker 4: just like dangerous or deadly or disgusting. And there was
Speaker 4: actually a lack of objectivity and approaching this whole group
Speaker 4: of organisms, and as it kind of created a vacuum
Speaker 4: of knowledge. So I started to sort of be interested in, well,
Speaker 4: how did that come to be? How is it that
Speaker 4: a group of organisms could be treated so subjectively by scientists,
Speaker 4: and what does that mean for sort of our understanding
Speaker 4: of them now?
Speaker 3: And so as I.
Speaker 4: Dug into that, I got really interested in sort of
Speaker 4: the history of mycology. You know, this feeling of fear
Speaker 4: and revulsion that a lot of people in particularly in
Speaker 4: North America or Western Europe have towards fungi. And that
Speaker 4: brought me into sort of the realm of queer theory
Speaker 4: as well, which is, you know, the understanding of categories
Speaker 4: usually relating to sex and gender, but sort of how
Speaker 4: we make sense of what is quote unquote normal, what
Speaker 4: is quote unquote deviant, And queer theory could sort of
Speaker 4: was used as a lens for understanding this construction, these
Speaker 4: binaries that we construct in society about what is good
Speaker 4: or bad, or what is normal what's not normal. I
Speaker 4: had started digging into that and was giving some talks
Speaker 4: on the subject, and then an editor reached out to
Speaker 4: me and asked, Hey, do you want to write a
Speaker 4: book about queer theory and biodiversity? And I was like, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 4: So I started doing that in I believe that was
Speaker 4: the spring of twenty twenty two awesome.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of queerness in the broader sense, how do
Speaker 1: we currently define queer and queerness at a human level,
Speaker 1: Because I feel like it's easy, it's easy to sort
Speaker 1: of culturally absorb the term without really understanding its history.
Speaker 1: And I guess you might say evolved, meaning sure.
Speaker 4: So I use queerness sort of as an umbrella term
Speaker 4: for life and behavior and ways of being that are
Speaker 4: outside of the heteronormativity, but also as a way of
Speaker 4: invoking kind of a notion of a shared collective struggle
Speaker 4: towards liberation. So queer was, you know, used to be
Speaker 4: an insult or a pejorative term, and then people in
Speaker 4: that community took that back and sort of proudly self
Speaker 4: identified as particularly around the height of the AIDS crisis
Speaker 4: epidemic in the United States, and used that sort of
Speaker 4: queerness as a rallying cry to bring people from otherwise
Speaker 4: sort of disparate LGBTQ groups and like bind them together
Speaker 4: and come together for the shared purpose of, you know,
Speaker 4: addressing the AIDS crisis and other injustices related to homosexuality
Speaker 4: and so forth. So I actually think that queerness is
Speaker 4: a term that is not just about I think you
Speaker 4: can be gay and not really embody queerness. And by
Speaker 4: that I mean I think that for me, the use
Speaker 4: of queer is always sort of tied to collective liberation
Speaker 4: and so understanding your role in the collective and sort
Speaker 4: of how you relate to systems of power, and I'm
Speaker 4: you know, I'm sure other people have different definitions, and
Speaker 4: that's one of the beauty of things that's beautiful about
Speaker 4: being queer is that, you know, sometimes you don't have
Speaker 4: to commit to one singular definition. But for me, that's
Speaker 4: how I sort of understand it, and I apply that
Speaker 4: not just to the human world in terms of liberation,
Speaker 4: but also liberation of non human species and life systems
Speaker 4: on earth.
Speaker 1: All right, And that brings us to queer ecology. How
Speaker 1: do we bring this definition of queer and queerness into
Speaker 1: the ecological world and what's the history of queer ecology?
Speaker 4: So queer ecology is sort of a you know, an
Speaker 4: emerging field. I would say it's been there's been some
Speaker 4: writings around it for the past decade or so, but
Speaker 4: it's starting to take more shape. I think it's becoming
Speaker 4: something that people are sinking their teeth into a bit
Speaker 4: more in the last few years. There are many dimensions
Speaker 4: to it. Up front, the most clear and concise like
Speaker 4: element of queer ecology is the fact that many organisms
Speaker 4: are simply not binary or sort of heteronormative and their
Speaker 4: reproductive strategies. So throughout the animal kingdom, there's all sorts
Speaker 4: of same sex mating behaviors, partnerships. There are organisms that
Speaker 4: have multiple sex is that sometimes in the same individual
Speaker 4: or over a singular life span. In the fungal world,
Speaker 4: we have all sorts of reproductive strategies that are non binary.
Speaker 4: So there's sometimes sometimes there are you know, quote unquote
Speaker 4: male or female species, but oftentimes there's multiple sexes or
Speaker 4: mating types depending on the group, their entire lineages of
Speaker 4: fungi that are just asexual.
Speaker 3: For all.
Speaker 4: We know quer ecologies interested in exploring the biological reproductive
Speaker 4: strategies of different organisms and also the behaviors between organisms,
Speaker 4: and sort of like bringing to the four research that
Speaker 4: had been either neglected to be you know, conducted, or
Speaker 4: suppressed or sort of just overlooked regarding these sort of non.
Speaker 3: Non normal, you know, non.
Speaker 4: Heteronormative reproductive strategies. So that you know, a lot, a
Speaker 4: lot of the argument to shame queerness or same sex
Speaker 4: behaviors or it has been rooted in the fact the
Speaker 4: claim that it's not natural right to be gay, it's
Speaker 4: not natural to be transgender, or something like this. But
Speaker 4: we actually know that throughout all throughout the tree of life,
Speaker 4: there are so many examples of these types of ways
Speaker 4: of being. So if the claim is that it's not natural,
Speaker 4: that's just not accurate. So part of it is just
Speaker 4: sort of a corrective against that claim. Now, you know,
Speaker 4: often the goalpost is shifted by those who are you know,
Speaker 4: homophobic or whatnot, but that has been a long standing claim,
Speaker 4: so queer ecology helps sort of make that clear. But
Speaker 4: then going further than that, getting into the little bit
Speaker 4: more of the theories and philosophies, it's also about understanding
Speaker 4: these constructions of categories, So like, how do we like,
Speaker 4: how do science make sense of the world? Are there
Speaker 4: limitations to that worldview? Are there are ways in which
Speaker 4: we've sort of blunted our understanding of nature because we've
Speaker 4: been steeped in a particular cultural lens, so particularly Western
Speaker 4: European philosophies. So one thing I talk about a lot
Speaker 4: in my research and in my book is the kind
Speaker 4: of notion of an individual. Right, So I'm a taxonomist,
Speaker 4: I'm someone who names and describes new species of fungi,
Speaker 4: So I definitely understand the utility of like a species
Speaker 4: concept or you know, drawing the you know, approximate limits
Speaker 4: of an individual. So we can kind of make sense
Speaker 4: of it and communicate about it, but there's also sort
Speaker 4: of like under I also understand that that's like a
Speaker 4: tool and a way of making sense in certain contexts,
Speaker 4: but sometimes to deep more deeply understand a really complex system,
Speaker 4: we might need to let go of certain rigid boxes
Speaker 4: that we've constructed, and so that can be a really
Speaker 4: challenging thing for people steeped in Western philosophical thought, and
Speaker 4: we really love the idea of an individual as a
Speaker 4: unit as a structure. But for example, in fungi, we
Speaker 4: see oftentimes that these organisms are not really adhering to
Speaker 4: really clear lines of like what is this body versus
Speaker 4: the other? Like what is this species versus the other?
Speaker 4: And often fundi or forming really complex webs of interaction
Speaker 4: living you know, basically living in symbiosis, you know, sometimes
Speaker 4: cells with in larger bodies. And then it starts to
Speaker 4: challenge your ability to really like draw those lines when
Speaker 4: the more you sort of engage with a biological understanding
Speaker 4: of these really complex beings. So in quer ecology we
Speaker 4: sort of are like bringing that to light, like how
Speaker 4: does how do we make sense of the world if
Speaker 4: we kind of decompose some of the notions that we've
Speaker 4: long kind of clung onto. And my goal with this
Speaker 4: is always to do better science, right, So ultimately I'm
Speaker 4: not trying to discard.
Speaker 3: The scientific method. Again, I'm very positive towards science.
Speaker 4: But it's about like pushing us beyond the limits of
Speaker 4: current knowledge. Can we better understand the ecosystems around us,
Speaker 4: like how fungi form complex partnerships or how you know,
Speaker 4: desoil function. Can we can we push past some of
Speaker 4: the limitations that we've imposed on our own scientific processes
Speaker 4: by not examining our own biases.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I found it really interesting to think about because I
Speaker 1: know for some listeners out there, there may be this
Speaker 1: sort of maybe instinctual backlash against the idea of career ecology,
Speaker 1: thinking that, well, okay, maybe this is like a human
Speaker 1: cultural matter and it's being used to influence the shape
Speaker 1: of scientific undertaking. But it's really quite the opposite, Isn't
Speaker 1: it more of an attempt to undo binary, anthropomorphic interpretations
Speaker 1: of nature?
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: I think that's a really good way of a succinct
Speaker 4: way of putting it. You know, so often I hear
Speaker 4: or like kind of detect a resistance to this. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like to politicizing science or making yeah, like adding this
Speaker 4: sort of like identity politics to science or something like this.
Speaker 4: But really, like, actually, when you examine the scientific record,
Speaker 4: you can see that it's already fraught with.
Speaker 3: Those things, there's all.
Speaker 4: And that's why I think the mycological example is really
Speaker 4: powerful because so like even we have examples of like
Speaker 4: Carl Linnaeus, one of the founders of modern taxonomy, describing
Speaker 4: fungi as rostichi poparini, the poorest peasants of the vegetable class. Like,
Speaker 4: that's an incredibly subjective way of looking at an organism, right,
Speaker 4: calling it poor and a peasant and obviously filled with disdain.
Speaker 3: So that's not objectivity. That's he thought they were weird.
Speaker 4: He called them, you know, he categorized them as lower plants,
Speaker 4: so that obviously this was prior to our Darwinian evolution knowledge.
Speaker 4: So like, I'm not holding that against him, but at
Speaker 4: the same time that is still the fact of the
Speaker 4: matter is that a lot of scientists.
Speaker 3: Were Christian Western European.
Speaker 4: Men of high class, and those world views are present
Speaker 4: in their writings and in the canon of science. So
Speaker 4: I'm sort of look kind of treating this as like
Speaker 4: a way a corrective to that history. How do we
Speaker 4: go through that history and make sense of the what
Speaker 4: we know now? Understanding that these people were like all
Speaker 4: of us, you know, limited while we're all limited in
Speaker 4: our capacity, and that's that's not a terrible thing, but
Speaker 4: it is true. And so sometimes people think that if
Speaker 4: you're kind of constantly thinking about sociology or your your
Speaker 4: own identity, that you might be clouding your own objectivity.
Speaker 4: But I think it kind of actually can function the
Speaker 4: opposite way, that it actually can make you more conscious
Speaker 4: of your flaws and what biases you might be replicating
Speaker 4: because we all have them. Right, It's not about saying
Speaker 4: someone's good or bad. It's just that we all are
Speaker 4: people and can and can be limited. And so it's
Speaker 4: also not really I think that much about your own identity.
Speaker 4: I think that it's really about understanding how information moves,
Speaker 4: how do we assign value, how to assign how does
Speaker 4: power function to create meaning? And anyone is capable of
Speaker 4: sort of like exploring that, right, that's not you don't
Speaker 4: have to have a particular identity to be interested in
Speaker 4: challenging that or like thinking through that critically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I feel like it's one of those worldviews
Speaker 1: where like it's we're just in it and we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily like see it. We're not necessarily aware of these
Speaker 1: limitations unless we sort of step outside of it momentarily
Speaker 1: at least, right, it's.
Speaker 4: A good practice as a scientist, I think, to kind
Speaker 4: of reflect on even if you think your discipline is really,
Speaker 4: you know, not touched by human culture, I think it
Speaker 4: can be, and I would say some disciplines are much
Speaker 4: more in touch with that than others, but there's still, like,
Speaker 4: I think it's a good reflection as a scientist. I
Speaker 4: think it can make you a more ethical, more grounded,
Speaker 4: and more effective scientist to at least be like considering
Speaker 4: these how this might function in your own work.
Speaker 1: Now, coming back to the book. Very early on in
Speaker 1: the book, you mentioned the nineteen ninety six French documentary Microcosms,
Speaker 1: which I think a lot of our listeners have probably
Speaker 1: seen in spite of perhaps of that sort of infamous
Speaker 1: American poster that featured the praying mantis with the sunglasses
Speaker 1: rather out of keeping with the actual vibe of the film,
Speaker 1: the vibe of which you discussed.
Speaker 4: So I really love that film because it's so immersive
Speaker 4: in this world of insects and and other arthropods, and
Speaker 4: I think that those animals are so often treated with contempt, right,
Speaker 4: so we similar to fungi. There's these perceptions around insects
Speaker 4: and these you know, invertebrate animals that they're creepy, disgusting, they're.
Speaker 3: Like unworthy of our care and love.
Speaker 4: You know, we we don't have any like coordinated system
Speaker 4: for ethics around insect right, It's all like, actually the
Speaker 4: ethic is really that you can kill them without mercy.
Speaker 4: And so I I just find but I find them
Speaker 4: to be so incredibly well. They are not just I
Speaker 4: don't not just me who finds them this way. They
Speaker 4: are incredibly diverse. There there are you know, millions of
Speaker 4: species of insects, and they are these it's a whole,
Speaker 4: it's a universe unto itself, right, And so what I
Speaker 4: like about microcosmos is that it really submerses you into
Speaker 4: that world and you start to see that these things
Speaker 4: are animals. Like I think a lot of people know technically,
Speaker 4: and I'm sure most listeners to this podcast know that
Speaker 4: like insects are animals, but you can still like something
Speaker 4: about making the micro sort of macro you really see like, oh,
Speaker 4: this thing has like all these ornaments, and it has
Speaker 4: a behavior, and it has a family, and it has
Speaker 4: these you know, and it has sex and like all
Speaker 4: it is like an animal world. I think we just
Speaker 4: reduce them to these very flat, kind of negative categories otherwise.
Speaker 4: So I love that it kind of creates this drama
Speaker 4: that you're like with the music and and you're sort
Speaker 4: of in and then like these towering plants all around
Speaker 4: you and you're kind of in this metropolis of this
Speaker 4: other world. And I think it makes them feel like dynamic,
Speaker 4: because they are dynamic. They're species that have complex lives
Speaker 4: and probably feel all sorts of sensations that we've kind
Speaker 4: of typically denied them, so like pleasure and maybe even
Speaker 4: pain and fear, and we you know, we don't know
Speaker 4: too much about insect neuroscience in terms of what sensations
Speaker 4: they're capable of. But it kind of seems crazy to
Speaker 4: me that we would just assume from the jump that
Speaker 4: they're unfeeling entirely Like that doesn't make that doesn't really
Speaker 4: make scientific sense to me, right, So, and then there's
Speaker 4: also so there's other arthropods and and and then invertebrates.
Speaker 4: So like, I really love the snail sex scene where
Speaker 4: these to u snails are there is like a gradual
Speaker 4: operatic situation where they are finding they find each other
Speaker 4: in the in the moss, and then they are entwine
Speaker 4: their bodies together and it's just and the opera crescendos
Speaker 4: as it is happening, and it's just like, Wow, these
Speaker 4: animals are really like experiencing pleasure, Like they're really like
Speaker 4: in this thing together, and they're and also they're both
Speaker 4: You're not sure what the sex is of either, because
Speaker 4: they're they actually are both hermaphroditic. They both have both
Speaker 4: you know, male and female reproductive organs in their bodies,
Speaker 4: so there there is this queer, literal, reproductively queer element
Speaker 4: to them as well.
Speaker 3: So I just it's a great film.
Speaker 4: If you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend just setting
Speaker 4: aside a couple hours and immersing yourself into this micro world.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had seen it years ago, and I noticed
Speaker 1: that it's currently on Criterion Channel, so I pulled it
Speaker 1: up during lunch the other day. Yeah, it's it's still gorgeous,
Speaker 1: and this is something you touch on in the book as well.
Speaker 1: It has almost no narration there's like a little opening, narrational,
Speaker 1: little closing, but for the most part, like you're just
Speaker 1: immersed in this visual world of the creatures studied here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really beautiful.
Speaker 1: So in the book, you bring up many examples of
Speaker 1: queerness in nature, again not exceptions to an imagined binary rule,
Speaker 1: but expressions of that abounding queerness that you get to
Speaker 1: in the title. What are some of your favorite additional
Speaker 1: examples to bring up in discussing queer ecology.
Speaker 3: I really am.
Speaker 4: Obsessed with eels, and the specifically the American eel that
Speaker 4: I talk about in the book. I think they there's
Speaker 4: so much to their the they're very there. So they
Speaker 4: have a very queer body, right, So they are organisms
Speaker 4: that spend most of their life as intersex.
Speaker 3: In zoology, we use the.
Speaker 4: Word hermaphroditic, but I know that humans prefer intersex, so
Speaker 4: I try I actually, I guess I think.
Speaker 3: That's probably the better term to use.
Speaker 4: So in the snail, sorry, the eel bodies are intersex
Speaker 4: in that they both have both male or they have testes,
Speaker 4: and they have ovaries for most of their life, and
Speaker 4: so you can't you know, there there was a lot
Speaker 4: of mystery around them in the early days of natural history,
Speaker 4: trying to understand what, well, what are they, you know,
Speaker 4: and so the a lot of scientists were determined that
Speaker 4: they must be either male or female, and so that
Speaker 4: sort of lens of trying to prove that they were
Speaker 4: one or the other dominated investigations into their bodies in biology,
Speaker 4: and one of those people researching eel sex was Sigmund Freud,
Speaker 4: and I so I write a little bit about his
Speaker 4: early days, before he became interested in psychology or before
Speaker 4: he was studying it, was studying natural history, and he
Speaker 4: he was someone who wanted to sort of understand what
Speaker 4: the eel sex situation was, and spoke spent actually a
Speaker 4: lot much of his time dissecting the bodies of eels
Speaker 4: trying to find proof of like sort of one sex
Speaker 4: or the other. And he kept he wanted to find specifically,
Speaker 4: he didn't understand why, like where were all the males?
Speaker 4: So I think it was easier to find ovarian tissue,
Speaker 4: but it was harder to find testicular type tissues, and
Speaker 4: so he dissected like hundreds of eels before finally finding
Speaker 4: some evidence that.
Speaker 3: There were males or male sex organs.
Speaker 4: And he some he will think that this may have
Speaker 4: been this sort of pursuit might have given rise to
Speaker 4: some of his later concepts like castration, anxiety and stuff
Speaker 4: like this, because he was maybe made anxious by the
Speaker 4: fact that this was not actually something he could easily find.
Speaker 4: But eels are just, on several levels, incredibly fascinating. And
Speaker 4: one thing that also I grew really interested in was
Speaker 4: the way that they migrate. So they are spawned, they
Speaker 4: are all of the American eels are born in the
Speaker 4: Sargasso Sea, so kind of near the Bermuda triangle, and
Speaker 4: for up until very recently, this exact location was unknown,
Speaker 4: and their whole sort of sexual reproduction was not witnessed
Speaker 4: or recorded by science.
Speaker 3: And then the eels.
Speaker 4: Migrate from the Bermuda, like from the Sargasso Sea all
Speaker 4: the way up to the along the length of the
Speaker 4: North American Eastern Sea board and enter into freshwater systems
Speaker 4: through rivers that reach the ocean, and they swim upstream
Speaker 4: and they can go pretty far. They can travel hundreds
Speaker 4: of miles within the freshwater systems. And I got to
Speaker 4: experience eels at when I was teaching at Bard College
Speaker 4: in the Hudson Valley, so on the Hudson River and
Speaker 4: there was an eel monitoring project because eels have their
Speaker 4: populations have collapsed due to overfishing and pollution and habitat destruction.
Speaker 4: So there's a monitoring project with Hudsonia and an environmental
Speaker 4: org and we would I would take my students and
Speaker 4: we'd volunteer to help them trap eels, document them, and
Speaker 4: then release them into the freshwater systems. And so I
Speaker 4: started learning about how eels do this migration. They make
Speaker 4: this trip from the Sargasso Sea with just basically only
Speaker 4: being about an inch long, and they're totally translu except
Speaker 4: you can see through their bodies. You can see their
Speaker 4: eyes and then their their spinal cords, and but they're
Speaker 4: just this tiny little fish that like swims for it
Speaker 4: can take them over a year to swim from where
Speaker 4: they were born to these freshwater systems that the systems
Speaker 4: that their parents came from. And so I was, like,
Speaker 4: you know, started reading about how they are using magnetite,
Speaker 4: which is a oxidized iron material that's in their set
Speaker 4: like in and around their brains.
Speaker 3: And this is something that other animals have as well.
Speaker 4: It's best studied in fish like salmon, which also are,
Speaker 4: you know, do these complex migratory routes. But it's magnetite
Speaker 4: is present throughout the tree of life. Even humans have it,
Speaker 4: but we're not sure exactly if its function in our bodies.
Speaker 4: But what's amazing about magnetite is that it is in
Speaker 4: the case of these complex animals, like multicellular animals, it's
Speaker 4: probably it's believed to have been a bacterial origin, so
Speaker 4: it's likely arose from an endosymbiotic event. So end of
Speaker 4: symbiosis is a process by which, you know, one species
Speaker 4: of a smaller size is engulfed by another larger species
Speaker 4: and eventually, over time they become interdependent on one another
Speaker 4: through you know, many generations, and so this is the
Speaker 4: this is how many of our organelles came to be.
Speaker 4: So mitochondria, for example, were used to be free living
Speaker 4: bacteria that were absorbed by another cell and then instead
Speaker 4: of it being maybe eaten or just being sort of
Speaker 4: killed by that engulfing, it stayed ill live and then
Speaker 4: persisted as a living cell within a larger cell. And eventually,
Speaker 4: over many, many, many generations, they become you know, like
Speaker 4: entangled with each other in physiologically and energetically, and so
Speaker 4: this process is so I mean, it's just kind of
Speaker 4: crazy to wrap your mind around it, stranger than fiction
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways, Like what are the odds
Speaker 4: of these types of you know, cellular events happening, and
Speaker 4: how is it that such sort of randomness could then
Speaker 4: give rise to such complexity. I mean, this is like
Speaker 4: the study of evolution, right, it's just absolutely crazy. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's like it sometimes feels just absolutely absurd. But what
Speaker 4: I kind of am bringing it back a little bit
Speaker 4: to quer ecology in a moment, which is that for
Speaker 4: most of a lot of scientific history, Western science was
Speaker 4: pretty resistant to this idea of symbiosis or to interdependencies
Speaker 4: or sort of that you know, the individual could really
Speaker 4: be made up of many, you know, individuals, and we
Speaker 4: are collectively a being that is not really discernible without
Speaker 4: the presence of all these other micro organisms and such.
Speaker 4: So the science there was a scientist, an evolutionary biologist,
Speaker 4: Lynn Margolis, who was the person who's who brought end
Speaker 4: of biotic theory too, like the tension of science, and
Speaker 4: for many years she was dismissed as you know, being
Speaker 4: kind of just like part partly on the basis of
Speaker 4: her gender. But just also on the basis of the
Speaker 4: fact that this just seems so crazy, like we are
Speaker 4: how could endosymbiosis really be like the foundation of the
Speaker 4: human body, like like the noble amazing, you know, a
Speaker 4: complex person couldn't really could we really be just like
Speaker 4: a bunch of bacteria and fungi in a in a flesh,
Speaker 4: fleshy form. But over time, more and more evidence accumulated
Speaker 4: in support of her hypotheses. And now that is understood
Speaker 4: as as a like a you know, a fact of
Speaker 4: evolutionary biology, and so that, but she was willing to
Speaker 4: sort of challenge the paradigm and push outside of like
Speaker 4: what is normal and what is accepted in the scientific
Speaker 4: discipline and and at great personal you know, risk and
Speaker 4: costs professionally. So I think that that part that story
Speaker 4: of like how magnetite okay, okay, So then going back
Speaker 4: to the magnetite, there these ancient bacteria that probably through
Speaker 4: just a you know, random mutation, started accumulating magnetite in
Speaker 4: their cells. And the magnetite is receptive to the magnetic
Speaker 4: fields of the Earth, and so over time these what
Speaker 4: was probably just like you know, a mutation of accumulation
Speaker 4: of this of this material became beneficial to that organism.
Speaker 4: They started to be able to sort of orient themselves
Speaker 4: to the magn the magnetic fields of the Earth and
Speaker 4: developed something of a magneto taxis, so being able to
Speaker 4: move by ma magnetic fields, and so we have like
Speaker 4: chemotaxis or phototaxis and maxomagneto taxis is another form of response,
Speaker 4: you know, stimulation and response.
Speaker 3: So the over time and.
Speaker 4: We have there there are these basically accumulations of these
Speaker 4: little packets of magnetite in a bacterial cell and they
Speaker 4: form in a tiny like little chain, and that chain
Speaker 4: became almost like a compass needle that could move in
Speaker 4: response to the magnetic fields of the Earth, and that
Speaker 4: some ancestor of that bacteria was probably what was absorbed
Speaker 4: into another larger cell. That then is you know, deep
Speaker 4: in the tree of life of animals, and a common
Speaker 4: ancestor of most animals probably had absorbed some sort of
Speaker 4: magneto tactic bacteria, and that's why we can find it
Speaker 4: scattered across all the tree of life. And so some
Speaker 4: animals have you know, evolved these magnetostomes, these more complex
Speaker 4: structures within with in which magnetite is found, and they
Speaker 4: are basically sensory organs that so, like in salmon, for example,
Speaker 4: we know that there's the complex magnetostmes in and around
Speaker 4: their little noses and faces, and they use that to
Speaker 4: guide their migratory journeys from from you know, sea in
Speaker 4: fresh water, and so we think have that as well,
Speaker 4: and that's sort of how they're able to travel through
Speaker 4: the ocean for weeks and weeks and weeks or oriented
Speaker 4: towards this sort of ancestral water that was probably somehow
Speaker 4: that imprinted into the magnetostomes that they're using. So this
Speaker 4: is that was a very long story, but I think
Speaker 4: both elements of the eobiology are are relevant. So there's
Speaker 4: the queer ecological the queer biological fact of their bodies
Speaker 4: being intersects for most of their life and then when
Speaker 4: they are about to make their journey, so they migrate
Speaker 4: up to freshwater, live there for several decades, and then
Speaker 4: when they are it's time to reproduce, they're sort of
Speaker 4: signaled into preparing for a journey back to the Sargasso
Speaker 4: c and at that point they replace all of their
Speaker 4: digestive organs get sort of cannibalized and cellularly repurposed into
Speaker 4: sexual reproductive organs, and that at that point typically they
Speaker 4: become you know, they develop more fully ovariant tissue or
Speaker 4: more fully testicular tissues, or they can retain both, and
Speaker 4: then they make that journey back to the Sargasso ce
Speaker 4: and they have a raucous I guess evening of sexual reproduction.
Speaker 4: So that is super queer in a sort of like
Speaker 4: in a direct reproductive sense. But then also this sort
Speaker 4: of you know, the history of endosymbiosis as being a
Speaker 4: kind of a rejected concept in the scientific establishment because
Speaker 4: it showed that these you know, quote unquote higher level
Speaker 4: organisms were the kind of random events of these lowly microbes,
Speaker 4: and that kind of perspective is something that challenges like
Speaker 4: the agency of more complex beings and the human.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, there's another organism that you bring up. And I
Speaker 1: have to admit this is an organism that has long
Speaker 1: been one of my favorites, but at a like a
Speaker 1: a zoo tourist level, like I've never researched them for
Speaker 1: the podcast or anything, so I only really knew what
Speaker 1: was out there already, like you know, going to zoos
Speaker 1: and you know up there on the little sign and
Speaker 1: so forth. But the castawary, Oh yeah, And granted there's
Speaker 1: a lot about the castiwary to catch your eye and
Speaker 1: to explain to a general audience, like their you know,
Speaker 1: their their coloration, their their flightlessness, their their feet, the
Speaker 1: formation on the top of their head. But I was
Speaker 1: really taken by your discussion of how they fit into
Speaker 1: queer ecology. Would you would you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So castiwaries they're amazing birds. They're incredibly you know,
Speaker 4: like they just are very much like, Okay, you understand
Speaker 4: that they're related to how closely related they are to dinosaurs,
Speaker 4: and so they're completely fascinating. But for in terms of
Speaker 4: the like they're sort of queer structures. They for a
Speaker 4: long time, it was really not discussed in any of
Speaker 4: the literature on their basic biology, like how they were
Speaker 4: reproducing and the fact that like some of the females
Speaker 4: have thesees and some of the males have like inverted
Speaker 4: uh basically like they instead of having an extroverted fallus,
Speaker 4: they have inverted structures.
Speaker 3: So they sort of have this like in what you know,
Speaker 3: what we would consider the.
Speaker 4: Opposite and you know, most people would consider the opposite
Speaker 4: type structure.
Speaker 3: Representing you know, on the male or female.
Speaker 4: And so for a long time, people who the people
Speaker 4: like indigenous to this area where castwerries are found, would
Speaker 4: involve cassowaries in a lot of their cosmologies and iconographies.
Speaker 4: And specifically we're aware that they had these you know,
Speaker 4: queer reproductive organs, organs that were not binary organs that
Speaker 4: defied sort of expectations around gender or sex, and they
Speaker 4: incorporated that into some into ritual and so forth. So
Speaker 4: this was known to the people who lived amongst them
Speaker 4: for thousands of years that they actually have really sort
Speaker 4: of these these structures. But in the Western se scientific
Speaker 4: descriptions of these birds there were there was really no
Speaker 4: mention of this fact. And and so actually I learned
Speaker 4: about this through reading Biological Exuberance by Bruce Begamial I
Speaker 4: believe is the pronunciation of his last name, which is
Speaker 4: a wonderful compendium, very textbook like compendium of examples of
Speaker 4: queerness in nature. And I found that it's a wonderful resource.
Speaker 4: It's and it does get a little bit into sort
Speaker 4: of the like reasons why certain studies were maybe not
Speaker 4: taken seriously or suppressed or ignored, and so He notes that,
Speaker 4: you know, these birds were known for a while to
Speaker 4: be like this, but you could not find record of
Speaker 4: that in in like publications, and he believes it's because
Speaker 4: there was sort of shame and anxiety around just simply
Speaker 4: reporting evidence of queerness or homosexuality or of you know,
Speaker 4: sort of gender sex nonconformity in the scientific literature. So
Speaker 4: it's it's just an it's an interesting example of the
Speaker 4: fact that like, so going back to the earlier part
Speaker 4: of our conversation where we can have or we talk
Speaker 4: about you know, it's not actually we're not actually being
Speaker 4: political when we pull these things out. We're actually exposing
Speaker 4: the fact that there were biases that clouded the objectivity
Speaker 4: in science, and it's important to acknowledge those and sort
Speaker 4: of pull that subjectivity out and actually just look at
Speaker 4: these things very factually. So it's just a good example
Speaker 4: of like what you what happens when you're just afraid
Speaker 4: to make waves in science, or you're or you're just not.
Speaker 3: Looking correctly, so you might have maybe maybe you you know.
Speaker 4: So he has other examples in the book too, where
Speaker 4: scientists would talk about, you know, seeing something and just
Speaker 4: really not believing them their own observations because it was
Speaker 4: contradictory to heteronormativity. It's like, or they would come up
Speaker 4: with very non parsimonious explanations as to why they were
Speaker 4: seeing what they were seeing. Oh, this these two you
Speaker 4: know birds are have a same sex partnership, but you
Speaker 4: know they're probably just confused or something like that, right,
Speaker 4: and so making these sort of like reaching for explanations
Speaker 4: that that are not really evidence based but are just
Speaker 4: sort of like would would kind of explain away the
Speaker 4: fact that you're constantly seeing same sex behaviors in that species.
Speaker 4: So the same with the cassowaries. This was the case
Speaker 4: as well that they were just like not either not report.
Speaker 4: We can't be sure exactly why, but it seems as
Speaker 4: if they were either not reporting what they were seeing
Speaker 4: or they didn't believe their own examinations of these birds.
Speaker 4: They were like, maybe I'm just not getting it, but
Speaker 4: maybe it was just that they're not conforming to our
Speaker 4: notions of what sexual structures should look like in males
Speaker 4: or females.
Speaker 1: It's such a fascinating way to sort of turn the
Speaker 1: tables on anthromomorphism and sort of see it as I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, on one hand, we have to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: anthromomorphism helps us in some cases care more about animals.
Speaker 1: You know, we see ourselves reflected in them, But then
Speaker 1: it can stand in the way of fully understanding what
Speaker 1: they are and how they operate, because even at a
Speaker 1: subliminal level, like we're seeing ourselves in them and seeing
Speaker 1: in them as models of humans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: I think that is a really important point, because I
Speaker 4: think anthropomorphism can be a good tool, and it can
Speaker 4: stand in the way, and it kind of is case dependent.
Speaker 4: And it's also so it sort of requires you to
Speaker 4: be constantly reflexive on like if I like withhold all
Speaker 4: of the complexity that I know is found in the
Speaker 4: human species from another species, am I learning more about it?
Speaker 4: Or am I making it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: Am I actually reducing my understanding of it? And so
Speaker 4: that kind of negotiation is something that I try to
Speaker 4: engage with regularly. It's like, so, for example, going back
Speaker 4: to the insects, if I assume nothing like no human
Speaker 4: qualities can be mapped onto insects, then I might assume
Speaker 4: that they're incapable of experiencing pleasure or pain, or that
Speaker 4: they don't have like complex social realities and then I
Speaker 4: might actually not really understand insects, but you can take it. Then,
Speaker 4: as you're saying, you can also for the castworries. If
Speaker 4: we assume like a male looks like this and a
Speaker 4: female looks like this, then you know you're because of
Speaker 4: what we think is normal for people, then we are
Speaker 4: also reducing our.
Speaker 3: Understanding of these organisms.
Speaker 4: So it kind of is this constant like negotiation and
Speaker 4: toggle between can can anthropomorphism actually enrich our scientific understanding
Speaker 4: or is in this moment is it restricting us? And
Speaker 4: so there isn't like a one answer. It's sort of
Speaker 4: a constant question. But I try my sort of inclination
Speaker 4: and this is just sort of my style not to
Speaker 4: be prescriptive, is to sort of assume human like qualities
Speaker 4: and then scientifically assess what you know.
Speaker 3: Is that accurate? And so I'd rather.
Speaker 4: Over project you know, feeling and dynamicism and complexity and
Speaker 4: then maybe have you with evidence take that away or
Speaker 4: under renegotiate that as opposed to assuming being that you're
Speaker 4: this inert, unfeeling species and you have nothing, you know,
Speaker 4: you're just you know, like a collection of molecules and
Speaker 4: there's no sort of vitalism there, and so that's kind
Speaker 4: of that's if I had to pick one. I actually
Speaker 4: think anthropomorphism is likely to enrich our understanding, but caveats abound.
Speaker 1: Now coming back to the realm of mycology and where
Speaker 1: it intersects with human culture and understanding, I wonder what
Speaker 1: your thoughts are on this. I know that, like in general,
Speaker 1: writers have often touched on different cultures being micophilic or microphobic,
Speaker 1: like on the whole, seeing like the realm of mushrooms
Speaker 1: and fun guys being dangerous or beneficial and not being
Speaker 1: like wrapped up in their culture. And this of course
Speaker 1: gets into what you were talking about earlier, about the
Speaker 1: about certain despised species or forms of life within given cultures.
Speaker 1: And I was just wondering, like, do you see an
Speaker 1: overlap between traditional cultures that are more micophilic and ones
Speaker 1: that are traditionally like less defined by rigid binary definitions
Speaker 1: of sexuality and gender.
Speaker 3: Hmm, that's a really good question.
Speaker 4: I think in general, yes, I would say that as
Speaker 4: I'm not you know, and I'm not an anthropologist or
Speaker 4: a sociologist, but you know, so as a mycologist trying
Speaker 4: to sort of explore this topic. I you know, I
Speaker 4: don't I can't speak super confidently for other cultures, but
Speaker 4: what I can say is that a lot of the
Speaker 4: history of homophobia and the history of sort of the
Speaker 4: way that the patriarchy functions in Western European and Euramerican
Speaker 4: culture had you know, that's something that has been exported
Speaker 4: around the world through colonialism and other you know, there
Speaker 4: have been societies all over the world that have had,
Speaker 4: you know, have sought to have conformity with gender and
Speaker 4: with you know, and have been patriarchal and stuff. But
Speaker 4: the type the sort of manifestation that we are now
Speaker 4: all pretty familiar with originated in you know, Western European
Speaker 4: and euro American thought, and then what has been imposed
Speaker 4: pretty forcefully around the world. So I would say that
Speaker 4: in general, there's a trend that societies that had less
Speaker 4: rigid notions of gender or still do have also had
Speaker 4: under like cosmological understandings of the earth as being you know,
Speaker 4: with as they're being like deep interdependence between species, and
Speaker 4: are generally less hierarchical even in their understanding of species
Speaker 4: not that are non human, you know, so much of
Speaker 4: the the binary understanding of like humans and nature that
Speaker 4: is also like a Western you know, European origin, the
Speaker 4: exact manifestation of it in you know that we're now
Speaker 4: familiar with.
Speaker 3: You know, there's like there's us and them.
Speaker 4: There are these two categories, there's human and nature, and
Speaker 4: that you know, humans are placed atop this hierarchy.
Speaker 3: We were, you know, we were the chosen species.
Speaker 4: We are divine, and we are the most complex and
Speaker 4: the most intelligent and most rational, and everything else is.
Speaker 3: Just sort of beneath us to varying degrees.
Speaker 4: And in Western European thought that the things that were
Speaker 4: the lowest on this sort of pyramid would have been
Speaker 4: fungi and invertebrates, insects and things like this. So that
Speaker 4: hierarchy is really foundational to European and Western European thought.
Speaker 4: So that and that's so it is like some I
Speaker 4: guess I feel most confident speaking about this society because
Speaker 4: I'm someone who grew up in it. I'm part Irish
Speaker 4: Irish and part Armenian, and I grew up in the
Speaker 4: United States, So I feel like most you know, I'm
Speaker 4: most able to comment on how that functions. Now, there
Speaker 4: are other societies you know, around the world that including
Speaker 4: Eastern European, places in Mexico, places in West Africa, Japan
Speaker 4: where mushrooms are not considered, you know, not as strongly
Speaker 4: associated with anything negative, and have a long history of
Speaker 4: being celebrated and integrated into culture and and historically these
Speaker 4: places also had had less rigid understandings of gender. But now,
Speaker 4: of course it's hard to sort of draw that line
Speaker 4: because of the impact of colonialism. So I'd say that
Speaker 4: there is a releasetionship. And I'm always interested in hearing
Speaker 4: from people who grew up steeped in other cultures about
Speaker 4: this specific topic, because there isn't a lot written about it.
Speaker 4: So this is sort of just what I've been able
Speaker 4: to kind of piece together over time, again not being
Speaker 4: a sociologist, but there is a relationship between sort of
Speaker 4: how does a culture respond to the unknown. So in general,
Speaker 4: there's like a feeling that what is unknown induces sort
Speaker 4: of anxiety and fear versus the unknown inducing something sort
Speaker 4: of a feeling of revelation or divinity or you know,
Speaker 4: sort of magic. And I think in our culture there
Speaker 4: is a association with wanting to control the unknown, to
Speaker 4: be unknown as to be a threat, and that's subversive
Speaker 4: and so fungi kind of are these organisms, and same
Speaker 4: with insects in particular. They both are groups of organisms
Speaker 4: that really subvert the desire to dominate because they're, like,
Speaker 4: you know, difficult to predict. They can they move in
Speaker 4: ways that sort of are they can be ephemeral, they
Speaker 4: can amass, they can pop up overnight. Right, And this
Speaker 4: all of this sort of transitory, ephemeral, difficult to predict
Speaker 4: biology makes them sort of induces a feeling of fear,
Speaker 4: and I think that that is also there's a parallel
Speaker 4: there to how people respond to people who do not
Speaker 4: conform not just within matters of sex and gender, but
Speaker 4: also in terms of ability, in terms of race. Right,
Speaker 4: So there's also this feeling of like, if you're not
Speaker 4: what I expect, I will fear you because I can't
Speaker 4: I don't quite know how to control you, right, And
Speaker 4: control is often executed first by putting someone in a box. Right,
Speaker 4: you are either this or that. I need to make
Speaker 4: sense of you so I know what to expect. Instead
Speaker 4: of Wow, I don't know what to make of you,
Speaker 4: how interesting, how beautiful, it's it's like, wow, I don't
Speaker 4: know what to make of you. I'm now oppositional to you, right,
Speaker 4: So that sort of response is something also that's very
Speaker 4: like steeped into our culture.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of fun, guy, can you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about labouls? This This is not a This
Speaker 1: is not something I was familiar with before.
Speaker 4: Sure, they're not a well studied group of fungi, so
Speaker 4: I'm one of only a handful of people in the
Speaker 4: world who study this entire order of fungi. The Laboulbinili's
Speaker 4: kind of a mouthful. We call them labulls for short,
Speaker 4: so that's a little easier. And they are a very
Speaker 4: diverse lineage of fungi that live and grow on insects.
Speaker 4: People are probably much more familiar with another group of
Speaker 4: fungi that live and grow on insects, the cordyceps or
Speaker 4: the zombie fungi, but these are in the same phylum,
Speaker 4: but completely different orders and classes.
Speaker 3: So labulls are they? Some of them we believe to
Speaker 3: be parasitic.
Speaker 4: We believe they take nutrients from the insect host at
Speaker 4: the insects expense, but others seem to be maybe more commensal,
Speaker 4: Like we haven't been able to quantify any sort of
Speaker 4: damage they're doing to the host. And the host seems
Speaker 4: kind of able to just go about its life as normal.
Speaker 4: But in any case, they're they're really interesting fungi, if
Speaker 4: you can believe it.
Speaker 3: There's tens of thousands of species of.
Speaker 4: This order, which just is, you know, the biodiversity is
Speaker 4: just staggering, right, So a group of funge i've never
Speaker 4: heard of living their lives and insects, and there's just
Speaker 4: tens of thousands of species of them, and they're really small.
Speaker 4: They sometimes can be sort of detected with the naked eye,
Speaker 4: but usually you need at least a hand lens. But
Speaker 4: and then, but the most common way to find them
Speaker 4: is looking at insects under a dissecting microscope, and they
Speaker 4: grow outward from the exterior of the insect. They're multicellular,
Speaker 4: they're really flexible and durable. They're not like ephemeral, so
Speaker 4: once they grow there, they you know, are there until
Speaker 4: they die. Essentially, they're not like coming up and out
Speaker 4: of the insect body. The spore basically lands on the
Speaker 4: exterior of the insect and then some minute penetrative cells
Speaker 4: germinate from that and enter just like shallowly into the
Speaker 4: insect body and form kind of like an anchor, and
Speaker 4: then from that, you know, a few dozen cells will
Speaker 4: form in a definitive structure, so meaning they always they're
Speaker 4: not amorphous. They have a pretty defined cellular growth pattern,
Speaker 4: and so when we do taxonomy on these fungi we
Speaker 4: are looking at more Our morphological descriptions involve draw you know,
Speaker 4: understanding the exact cell like shape, size, and arrangement, and
Speaker 4: this is highly variable. There are like really thousands of
Speaker 4: ways these fungi can present itself, but it's pretty fixed
Speaker 4: within a species and even within a genus there's like
Speaker 4: very common body plans, and so we also would use
Speaker 4: genetic DNA sequencing to do the taxonomic work on these
Speaker 4: funge But they're just really I mean, they're What I
Speaker 4: love about them is that they are so quietly existing
Speaker 4: in this tremendous diversity. They're the most diverse lineage of
Speaker 4: insect associated fungi.
Speaker 3: So you have, you know, the incredible diversity of the insect.
Speaker 4: World, and then on that you have this other whole
Speaker 4: realm of species that are you know, have evolved and
Speaker 4: are living and dying. And I'm pretty much unbeknownst to
Speaker 4: you know, any witnesses, And to me, that's just a
Speaker 4: very like. That's one of the things I love about
Speaker 4: studying biodiversity, and of these fungi in particular. It's just
Speaker 4: that they they are really kind of uninterested to project
Speaker 4: at anthropomorphically on them.
Speaker 3: They're just you know, they're here whether or not.
Speaker 4: People are and this, like and this, and it kind
Speaker 4: of really reminds you of It makes me think as
Speaker 4: a person, like, while the world like is so dynamic
Speaker 4: and it has was here before me and will be
Speaker 4: here after me, and there's all these processes going on
Speaker 4: that really are kind of be apart from the the
Speaker 4: like my social perception, you know, and I just think
Speaker 4: that can be kind of calming and meditative. But I
Speaker 4: really like working with them because I get to also
Speaker 4: work with insects, so it brings me into contact with
Speaker 4: multiple kingdoms of life in this really intimate way. I
Speaker 4: love doing microscopy. I love being like kind of immersed
Speaker 4: in the micro world. So going back to the microcosmos,
Speaker 4: I get to, you know, getting to stare at the
Speaker 4: the an insect under the microscope a dissecting scope is
Speaker 4: so fun. You really see like all of its elaborate
Speaker 4: evolutionary you know, all the appendages and hairs and colors,
Speaker 4: and and it's it's you can it makes you feel
Speaker 4: like in touch with these this whole other realm. And
Speaker 4: then what's really exciting about being a micologist is that
Speaker 4: there are because we've only described you know, around we
Speaker 4: estimate three to five percent of fungal species diversity, there's
Speaker 4: no shortage of new species descriptions that can be just authored.
Speaker 4: So I get to you know, been able to name
Speaker 4: and describe about a dozen species, new species to science,
Speaker 4: all within this group the level of inniles. So that's
Speaker 4: a fun thing too, is like you can say, you
Speaker 4: can say pretty definitively that you know, a person has
Speaker 4: not looked upon this fungus before because a no one
Speaker 4: is looking for them, and also because you need a
Speaker 4: microscope to see it, so it's just not likely that
Speaker 4: someone would have just bumped into it, you know, there there.
Speaker 4: You have to be looking for them to find them.
Speaker 4: So it's just kind of a fun opportunity for me
Speaker 4: to like be contributing taxonomically. And then also one thing
Speaker 4: that I like about being a taxonomist is that the
Speaker 4: practice of naming and you know, taxonomy does have a
Speaker 4: complicated history in terms of ethics, and you know, all
Speaker 4: of these forces that we've been talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of around colonialism and power and who gets to,
Speaker 4: you know, put a name on something and in what language.
Speaker 4: So one thing I like to think about is taxonomy
Speaker 4: as a practice of honoring, So not stamping your authority
Speaker 4: on it, as like an act of I guess possession,
Speaker 4: but being like, okay, here, this is a species that
Speaker 4: I share the planet with. This is a species who's
Speaker 4: been on this multi billion year journey like every other
Speaker 4: species here, And how can we sort of honor its diversity,
Speaker 4: regardless of its role in doesn't matter if this fungus
Speaker 4: is of utility.
Speaker 3: To me or to people like it. It's here, it exists.
Speaker 4: It is complex and dynamic and worthy of a name.
Speaker 4: So I like to think of naming as a system
Speaker 4: of like as a practice of honoring other the existence
Speaker 4: of and the sort of what I like to think
Speaker 4: of as sort of like the agency and almost like
Speaker 4: personhood of another being. Right to name is to sort
Speaker 4: of acknowledge that complexity. It's also an opportunity to sort
Speaker 4: of embody some of the practices that I think have
Speaker 4: been missing in the field of taxon I, which would
Speaker 4: be to name things, you know, perhaps based on using
Speaker 4: indigenous languages, from the location that organism was found, or
Speaker 4: from you know, you know, naming scientists who've been forgotten,
Speaker 4: or or you know, sort of like acknowledging like the
Speaker 4: complexity of the human life that might surround the procurement of.
Speaker 3: That species in the first place.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that that's sort of a fun thing that
Speaker 4: I can do with with mabules.
Speaker 1: Now you you mentioned the Court of Steps, and I
Speaker 1: want to highlight that you you do. You did appear
Speaker 1: on Science Friday to discuss uh the fund these particular
Speaker 1: fun guy uh and HBO's The Last Office, which of
Speaker 1: course has this I guess you'd say, like very sort
Speaker 1: of you know, of course a fantastic sci fi treatment
Speaker 1: of court Asteps that's very uh micophobic in its manifestation.
Speaker 1: But I do refer listeners to that interview if they
Speaker 1: want to they want like the full story.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I sort fungal fact from fiction on that episode.
Speaker 1: As we're I believe we're about to go into the
Speaker 1: second season of the Last of Us, any like quick
Speaker 1: reminders for folks about Cortyceps and sort of disconnecting the
Speaker 1: fantasy from the reality totally.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: So I've been asked a number of times like could
Speaker 4: people be turned into zombies by a fungus as they
Speaker 4: are in the show, And the answers know that these
Speaker 4: fungi and the insect hosts that they evolved on were
Speaker 4: in a you know, co evolutionary dynamic for millions of
Speaker 4: years and it took That's how the fungus is perfectly adapted,
Speaker 4: not just to like insects broadly, or not even just
Speaker 4: to like, you know, a whole group of insects, but
Speaker 4: specific species of insects. So, for example, Cordyceps could be
Speaker 4: found on a number of species of ants, but there
Speaker 4: are ants other ant species that live in and amongst
Speaker 4: you know, those in the areas that Cordyceps grows, and
Speaker 4: they're not affected because they have, you know, the subtle
Speaker 4: differences in behavior or or chemical ecology is enough that
Speaker 4: it's incompatible with that very precise co evolutionary dynamic. In
Speaker 4: order for fungi to evolve to be doing that to people,
Speaker 4: we would need probably millions and millions of years of exposures.
Speaker 4: And our our just bryologies are so different from our ants,
Speaker 4: so we're not really at risk in that way.
Speaker 3: I do really like the show. I think it's a
Speaker 3: great story.
Speaker 4: It is a little challenging that fungi are demonized, obviously,
Speaker 4: that's kind of kind of, you know, stressful for me.
Speaker 4: But from a from a storytelling perspective and from an
Speaker 4: action perspective, it's a great show.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My wife is a mushroom enthusiast and does like
Speaker 1: some mushroom club stuff and forging stuff, and so I'll
Speaker 1: often I would often joke to her after we'd watch
Speaker 1: an episode of the show about, oh, well, mushrooms are
Speaker 1: bad news. I got to be watch out for those mushrooms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good way to get under her skin.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Now coming back to the book again, there's
Speaker 1: a lot. There's a lot about science in there. There's
Speaker 1: also a lot of lately a personal interpretation of everything,
Speaker 1: and you get into the philosophy of it all. Can
Speaker 1: you take a moment to tell us what a six
Speaker 1: spot is? Sure, how that can potentially help us all
Speaker 1: in our daily lives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So a sid spot is a place you go regularly.
Speaker 4: I mean it could be every day, it could be
Speaker 4: once a month, but it's something that you do with
Speaker 4: some sort of routine and frequency. And it can be
Speaker 4: deep in the forest, it could be in an urban park,
Speaker 4: it could be looking out your window if you're someone
Speaker 4: who can't leave the house or can't do so easily.
Speaker 4: So it's not really about being in you know this quote,
Speaker 4: It's just about being in community with as many species
Speaker 4: as possible. So I have I'm a teacher. I've taught
Speaker 4: college classes and nature classes, and I have one thing
Speaker 4: I tried I often incorporate into my classes is having.
Speaker 3: My students do a sid spot.
Speaker 4: And the instructions I give is to start by going
Speaker 4: once a week. I think once a week is a
Speaker 4: nice amount of time because it's both like kind of
Speaker 4: reasonable for our hectic schedules, but it's also frequent enough
Speaker 4: that you it can kind of become like a personal ritual.
Speaker 4: And when you what I advise you do is that
Speaker 4: you go to your sit spot and you go by yourself.
Speaker 3: I think I do think it.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not that you can't go with a buddy,
Speaker 4: but I think it's really nice to go totally to
Speaker 4: be the only human right in that spot. And I
Speaker 4: also recommend that you don't bring anything at first. The
Speaker 4: first couple of spot times. I wouldn't even bring notebook,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't bring anything but just some stuff, maybe some water,
Speaker 4: maybe a snack if you're you know, but just try
Speaker 4: to go with, you know, keep your phone away, don't
Speaker 4: try to take pictures, don't try to record anything, and
Speaker 4: just be present. And I would recommend the first time
Speaker 4: doing it for at least thirty minutes. You go, you
Speaker 4: sit for thirty minutes, and you take note as of
Speaker 4: everything around you. What do you smell, what do you
Speaker 4: take touch with your fingertips, what do you see? Of course,
Speaker 4: what do you hear? Kind of roll through the senses,
Speaker 4: you know, go, Okay, what am I hearing right now?
Speaker 3: Wait? What am I seeing right now? You know? Look around?
Speaker 3: What am I smelling right now?
Speaker 4: Maybe you're sitting on a bench, or maybe you're sitting
Speaker 4: on the forest floor, like what are your fingertips sensing?
Speaker 4: And kind of go let yourself sort of move through that.
Speaker 4: My students will tell me that the first few times
Speaker 4: they did it, they were incredibly bored.
Speaker 3: The time for them moved very slowly.
Speaker 4: They were actually some of them were even detectively irritated
Speaker 4: with the assignment. But as the weeks progressed, one hundred
Speaker 4: percent of the students began to enjoy their time, and
Speaker 4: then after a few weeks you start you may maybe
Speaker 4: you decide, maybe you're an artist and you love illustrating.
Speaker 4: Maybe you bring a notebook and you sketch some of
Speaker 4: the plants that are growing. Maybe you're you like your
Speaker 4: sound person, you bring an audio way to record some audio.
Speaker 4: But maybe you decide or maybe you're I wouldn't I
Speaker 4: wouldn't do too much writing while you're there, because you
Speaker 4: do want to be mentally loose and receptive, so whatever,
Speaker 4: and that's that does look different for everyone. So however,
Speaker 4: you can be in a state of looseness and receptivity,
Speaker 4: to be porous, to be receiving this sort of the
Speaker 4: energy and the sort of information that's flowing from these
Speaker 4: other species and from the wind, from the humidity, you know,
Speaker 4: whatever it is. And so I think that over time,
Speaker 4: the point is that you become really immersed and really
Speaker 4: into tune with that spot.
Speaker 3: So I think in the age of.
Speaker 4: Climate change and the age of globalization, it can be
Speaker 4: really really overwhelming to understand where where do you put
Speaker 4: your focus right There's so many crises, there's so many stressors,
Speaker 4: there's so many things drawing and pulling at your attention,
Speaker 4: and so this is like kind of a practice of attention.
Speaker 4: Where do you give your attention in an intentional way
Speaker 4: and how does that sort of make you feel held
Speaker 4: and attuned with the other organisms around you. I also
Speaker 4: had a number of students actually cry at the end
Speaker 4: of the semester when they had to leave their spots.
Speaker 4: They were graduating or they had to leave for the
Speaker 4: summer or whatever it was, and they were like, I
Speaker 4: can't believe I have to leave this spot, Like this
Speaker 4: is my spot, this is like my place. And that
Speaker 4: happened just in a few months, right, that's just the
Speaker 4: duration of a college semester. And so for a lot
Speaker 4: of people it's an opportunity to become.
Speaker 3: Immerse, to be but also to be like a steward.
Speaker 4: Right, you suddenly make the more you pay attention to
Speaker 4: a spot, the more you see. So it's not just
Speaker 4: that you're there longer. So it's like you know, an
Speaker 4: exponential line of like you're there longer, so you're seeing more,
Speaker 4: but you're actually like it's actually that your brain starts
Speaker 4: to rewire a little bit, especially if this practice is
Speaker 4: really new to you you start to be a you
Speaker 4: actually are capable of noticing more the more you sort
Speaker 4: of engage with this meditatively. And so for some people
Speaker 4: that can it can help you find a role in
Speaker 4: what is otherwise a very crazy world. Right, how do
Speaker 4: you become a steward of your own backyard? Like how
Speaker 4: can you care for the species? Like maybe you're helping
Speaker 4: monitor the health of the trees in that area. Maybe
Speaker 4: you're realizing that there's a ton of there's a you're
Speaker 4: seeing all these salamanders or amphibians and that actually, oh,
Speaker 4: actually this is like a vernal pool, and this could
Speaker 4: be pretty because you know, by local legislation, there's all
Speaker 4: sorts of ways that you can sort of tune into
Speaker 4: the life around you and then actually do something to
Speaker 4: help care for it.
Speaker 3: So I definitely recommend it.
Speaker 4: I think it's such a nice way of like sort
Speaker 4: of I find it really peaceful and therapeutic and sort
Speaker 4: of a bomb.
Speaker 3: For my nervous system every time I go to my
Speaker 3: sit spot. So I recommend it.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Yeah, I'm gonna have to try it as well
Speaker 1: because I go out of nature, we go on walks
Speaker 1: and hikes and all, but this kind of like intentional,
Speaker 1: meditative approach, setting aside so many distractions and tasks and objectives.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, I think it's truly attractive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it can take a little while to like not
Speaker 4: be a little bored, but that's really normal that we're
Speaker 4: all kind of you know, overstimulated, So it could take
Speaker 4: a little bit of time, but I can assure you
Speaker 4: that you'll enjoy it as the ritual is established.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, the book is Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness
Speaker 1: of Nature. It's out next month in all formats, but
Speaker 1: available for pre order right now. What is the one
Speaker 1: thing you want readers to get out of forrest ephor
Speaker 1: you So, I.
Speaker 4: Think actually the the sit spot conversation is kind of
Speaker 4: closest to what I want readers to get out of it.
Speaker 4: I think that I want readers to feel closer to nature.
Speaker 4: I want readers to feel it like they're part of
Speaker 4: nature and nature is part of them, and these are
Speaker 4: things that will strengthen each other, like that knowledge I
Speaker 4: find is strengthening.
Speaker 3: It's something that's comforting.
Speaker 4: It is a a magnetic compass in a time of
Speaker 4: you know, poly crises. So I want people to feel
Speaker 4: that they belong their differences are what make them a
Speaker 4: part of this ecology that you know, Ecology is.
Speaker 3: All about difference, it's all about.
Speaker 4: Multiple, multiple ways of being in forms, and so to
Speaker 4: not feel shame around that. And I want people to
Speaker 4: see that nature is really all we have.
Speaker 3: There's nothing without it.
Speaker 4: I'm sure a lot of my readers will already be
Speaker 4: environmentalists and people committed to the protection of nature, but
Speaker 4: maybe it'll bring some more people into that fold as well,
Speaker 4: or strengthen that someone's.
Speaker 3: Commitment to that.
Speaker 1: All right, well, Patti, thanks for coming on the show
Speaker 1: and chatting with me.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it's
Speaker 3: fun to talk to you. Rob.
Speaker 1: Thanks again to Patty for coming on the show. The
Speaker 1: book again is Forest Euphoria, The Abounding Queerness of Nature,
Speaker 1: publishing next month and available for pre order in all
Speaker 1: formats right now. Again, you'll find a pre order link
Speaker 1: in the episode description, or you can look it up
Speaker 1: at Spiegel and Grau dot com slash Forest hyphen Euphoria.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Fridays, we set a I had
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. Thanks as always to the excellent
Speaker 1: JJ Possway for producing the show, and if you'd like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, you can shoot us
Speaker 1: an email at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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